Gingerbread Party and More

After the hotel, everyone came back to our house to play outside and have a little birthday party for Emma.

A favorite activity of the kids is tackling!

They think it is so fun to climb on this house.

Emma's 6th birthday!

She's waiting patiently for her cake!

The next morning we tried to get to my parent's house relatively early for the gingerbread party my mom had for the kids! Isn't the table so cute? Can you see how each child had their own personalized placemat?

She got them all these matching gingerbread pjs. The plan was to have them spend the night and then wake up and have this party. Unfortunately there was some illness making the rounds so a few of the activities had to be scratched. But they still looked cute in their PJs!

She also got them these gingerbread headbands. Hilarious!

Yummy breakfast! See the cute drink glasses there on the front of the table?

After reading a book about the gingerbread man, each sibling group got to decorate a gingerbread house.

They FILLED our house!

The finished product.

What a cute party, huh? So glad my kids were invited! :)

Christmas Fun

My Aunt Amy, Uncle Jim, and Uncle Ross all came into town for Thanksgiving, along with Amy and Jim's kids-Evan and Emma. We had lots and lots of fun activities planned while they were here!

First fun activity: visiting this BEAUTIFUL hotel! It's an annual tradition of ours so I'm glad they were able to come with us. We took TONS of pictures of the kids here, trying to get a good one for my Grandma and Grandpa. I think we succeeded, we must have with the number that we took!

Jackson, Evan, Ben, Emma, Elizabeth, and Cooper
Ben, Jackson, and Cooper

I loved this picture of Emma!

After watching some trains and posing in the sleigh, we walked to see the real live gingerbread house!

It's hard to believe it's really real!

I love his shirt... and 99% of the time it's true! :)

The trains were a fascination for sure.

They had funny reindeer all around that the kids loved.

Another group shot.

Me with my boys.

Emma loved Jackson and kept giving him hugs!

Making wishes.

Amy with Evan and Emma. I was trying to get the beautiful poinsettas in the background!

Love this one. (there's a soldier behind them saluting)

And that's the end folks!

MORE Family Photos!

We have been picture taking fools lately! Good thing I love pictures! :) We met our friends Emily and Justin + their kids a few weekends ago to take pictures of them for Christmas cards. Our boys get along so well together (they have two boys the same age as Coop and J). We went over to their house afterward for dinner and playtime!

It was such a cute area with some fun train tracks for the boys to play on.

I'm not posting any of Emily's in case she is using them for her Christmas cards! :) I'll post soon about all the fun we had over Thanksgiving!

Go KState!

This football season has made Cooper an AVID KState fan. Almost obsessed! He wants to eat with his KState silverware and plate, wear his KState shirts, and play football all of the time! His favorite color is now purple, and for Christmas he wants a KState helmet, jersey, pants, and football. It's so funny. He, Ryan, and Jackson play football multiple times a day inside-tackle and all. Cooper will say "I'm KState and you're Miami" or whoever they just recently played, and KState ALWAYS wins. Go cats!

I walked into the room with them watching the game and this is how they were. Isn't that so cute? Cooper was copying him.
This was the first picture, before the camera was noticed.

I remembered Lily has a KState jersey so we got it out one day. Cooper loved it and I had to get a picture of all three of them in their KState gear!

What We've Been Up To

Cooper's PK class had a Thanksgiving feast last week. We had fun watching the kids play together and I got a kick out of watching Jackson trying to be "big" like his big brother.

Cooper looked so cute in his headdress that he made!

Jackson was sick last week (had hives maybe related to eating pinenuts... I sure hope that's not the case!) and fell asleep on me! I just held him while he slept for an hour or so and LOVED it. He's so old now he never does that, I think it's probably been 6 months at least since he's fallen asleep on me. I miss it!

We made some "thankful turkeys" for Thanksgiving. Yes, Ryan even participated!

We're going to write one thing we're thankful for every day on a feather. Cooper so far has said "food, mom, dad, Jackson" I'd say those are all on the the top of my list too!! (except Cooper would be on that list too!)

I was doing a work-out video recently and Cooper ran and made weights for Jackson and him to do the video with me. Isn't that so cute? (I've noticed as I'm posting these that lots of these pictures have laundry in the background. Can you tell where I fold and sort laundry? :)

Cooper told me he was going to put Jackson's diaper on for me. He actually did without too much help! It was hilarious.

Laura and the kids came over to take come pictures for their Christmas card so I took a few more of my kids. Can't resist this cute face!

I think Cooper is very cute as well, but he was running around like a crazy person with Ben!

We were taking pictures of the four of them and realized they looked like silhouette pictures. We had some fun with it.

Can you tell they're spelling LOVE?

We also recently met Laura and Tom + kids to take a few family photos. I had to post this one because I thought J's fake smile was hilarious.

This smile is much better.

Best buddies!

The leaves are actually starting to fall!

My baby Jackson...

and finally one of just Cooper!

We're going to have a fun Thanksgiving week with family coming in town so I'll have lots of pictures to post!